source file: m1522.txt Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 22:11:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: "Novel" Tunings: A very useful caution From: "M. Schulter" In a very recent post, Paul Erlich noted that a tuning I described here last month in fact had been previously published. > (BTW, Helmholtz/Ellis have precedence over you in the "Schulter > Artusian 5-limit Just" tuning.) Hello, there, and I thought it maybe prudent just to note quickly that the title you cite in quotes for this tuning (based on the schisma fifth of 16384:10935) was the invention of another participant. I point this out with due humor, and also as a good example to show that just about any tuning scheme may in fact have a long previous history. Of course, your invaluable information is one of the benefits of posting to this list, precisely to find out about how a tuning that seems unfamiliar was actually documented many decades or even centuries ago. Checking back, I'm relieved to see that my initial post included the statement: Also, while I'm not sure if the complete 5-limit scale given below has been published, once one is familiar with the concept of a "schisma fifth" (described by Owen Jorgensen, for example), the rest of the scheme is easy to formulate -- although not necessarily to tune on an actual instrument. Thus while I wasn't familiar with the Helmholtz/Ellis treatment of this specific scale until you called it to my attention in your post, I'm not so surprised, given that _On the Sensations of Tone_ gives considerable attention to the schisma. In other cases, precedents for what may seem a "novel" tuning idea may be a bit more unexpected. For example, a few months ago, I got an idea for a "reverse Vallotti-Young temperament" with all six fifths involving only diatonic notes pure, and the others (involving accidentals) tempered by 1/6 Pythagorean comma each. My idea was that it might be an interesting "well-temperament" for adventurous accidentalism of a 14th-century variety, maybe carried a bit further than was typical at that time. Fortunately, I happened to stumble on Owen Jorgensen's section in his 1991 book on a French musician in England named Anton Bemetzrieder who published the same tuning in 1808, an era when such a neo-Pythagorean approach might seem especially unlikely. As Jorgensen notes, it is an utter reversal of typical 18th-19th century concepts of "key color" -- although it might lend an interesting color to certain 14th-century or similar modern styles. Thank you again for your message, which at once shares invaluable information, illustrates the communicative potential of this list, and serves as another cautionary example of a field rich with precedents. Most appreciatively, Margo Schulter mschulter@value.net